At least 54 people were shot, seven fatally, in Chicago over Labor Day weekend, NBC Chicago reported, as the city’s mayor and governor — both Democrats — vowed to resist President Donald Trump’s push to send in federal assistance.
Police said the shootings stemmed from a series of unrelated incidents, most with no arrests. Trump has suggested deploying the National Guard and federal agents to curb violence in the city.
Fatal victims this weekend include at least two women and three men, with two others not yet identified, police said. Authorities have not released any names, Fox News reported.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson on Saturday signed an executive order barring city police from cooperating with federal authorities, Fox noted.
“This executive order makes it emphatically clear that this president is not going to come in and deputize our police department,” Johnson said at a news conference with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other city leaders.
The order states Chicago police will continue enforcing state and local laws but will not assist the National Guard or federal agents with patrols, arrests, immigration enforcement, or other actions.
“This order affirms that the Chicago Police Department will not collaborate with military personnel on police patrols or civil immigration enforcement. We will not have our police officers, who are working hard every single day to drive down crime, deputized to do traffic stops and checkpoints for the president,” Johnson vowed.
“We will protect our Constitution, we will protect our city, and we will protect our people,” he said. “We do not want to see tanks in our streets. We do not want to see families ripped apart. We do not want grandmothers thrown into the back of unmarked vans. We don’t want to see homeless Chicagoans harassed or disappeared by federal agents.”
“We find ourselves in a position where we must take immediate, drastic action to protect our people from federal overreach,” said Johnson.
He added the order directs the city’s law department to use “every legal mechanism” to block Trump’s potential deployment plan.
Johnson said later that he would use “every single tool that is at our disposal, and that includes the courts.”
“It’s an area in which at least there’s some semblance of check and balance in this country,” he said, per NBC News.
Johnson said the executive order lays out several additional directives beyond challenging Trump’s potential deployment plan. Among them are rules clarifying what, if any, assistance Chicago police officers may provide to federal law enforcement, as well as prohibitions on concealing their faces or covering the Chicago Police Department’s insignia while in uniform.
The mayor said these measures were designed to ensure transparency and accountability in the event of federal operations taking place in the city, NBC reported.
The White House on Saturday rejected Johnson’s order, accusing Democrats of turning crime reduction efforts into a partisan issue.
“If these Democrats focused on fixing crime in their own cities instead of doing publicity stunts to criticize the President, their communities would be much safer,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Reuters in a statement.
Chicago has long grappled with gun violence, suffering another spike over the July 4 weekend when 55 people were shot, six fatally, and again over Memorial Day, when 22 were shot, two fatally. City data shows 272 homicides so far this year, including 225 fatal shootings, Fox reported.
Trump has already deployed troops and federal law enforcement to Washington, D.C., and threatened to do the same in other cities, including Baltimore.
Democrats, meanwhile, have put themselves in the position of opposing the president’s crime-fighting efforts, which isn’t likely to play well at the polls during next year’s midterms. While they attempt to frame Trump’s efforts as federal overreach, in fact, the actions are being taken to enforce specific federal laws, including those governing illegal immigration.
